Premier Danielle Smith's parliamentary secretary for constitutional affairs is encouraging Albertans to sign a petition that calls for a vote on separation from Canada. Jason Stephan, a United Conservative Party legislature member, penned his opinion for the online conservative media outlet "Western Standard." In it, Stephan argues signing the petition to have a referendum on separation is different from signing...
A terrible crash of an Air Canada jet in New York becomes a language crisis at the top of the country's national airline. The airline employs more than 35 thousand people, about a third of them in Montreal. But their Montreal based CEO speaks only English and this week that became painfully clear. Bruce and Chantal have their thoughts on...
Public servants who are eligible for the federal government's early retirement incentive can now apply for it after waiting months for the program's launch. The program -- part of the government's efforts to cut the number of public servants -- is meant to allow some federal workers to retire early without a pension penalty. It was announced in the fall...
Michael Ma's industry committee confrontation amplifies risk of U.S. tariff retaliation. Liberal MP Michael Ma's apology for confronting an academic witness about whether her evidence on forced labour in Chinese aluminum supply chains could be "hearsay" coincides with a highly sensitive moment in Canada's ongoing trade war with the Trump administration. After some of the tariffs Canada faced were struck...
A referendum on whether Alberta should separate from Canada “can have an effect” on investor confidence in the province, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Friday. Carney was in Nova Scotia, speaking to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce. When asked whether he thought an Alberta referendum could impact investor confidence, Carney said, “It can, yeah. It can have an effect.”...
Over half of Atlantic Canadians say they are fluid voters, in that they potentially change which party they support each election (55%), compared with 41% who usually vote for the same party. But in early 2026, that flexibility is consolidating decisively behind the Carney‑led Liberal government. New results from Narrative Research’s Atlantic Quarterly® show strong and broad satisfaction with the...
A new national survey from Liaison Strategies reveals a shifting landscape in the NDP leadership race, with Avi Lewis and Heather McPherson both making notable gains in favorability over the past year. The survey, which tracked the favorability of potential and declared candidates, highlights a significant increase in profile for Avi Lewis. Lewis has seen his favorability nearly double, rising...
WINNIPEG -- Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew called on NDP delegates Friday to focus on issues like affordability and health care and put off tackling bigger policy ideas until they form a government.
American lawmakers are demanding answers from the Trump administration after a Canadian man says U.S. customs officers held him for three hours at the border and forced him to provide a DNA sample before sending him home. U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat who represents an area of Michigan just outside Detroit, says she’s “outraged” by the man’s experience...
I have an urgent request for Prime Minister Mark Carney: please come to Vaughan, Ont., to meet with our Jewish community. As Vaughan’s mayor, I want you to know that Jews here feel angry, scared, defiant, tired, shocked and beleaguered. Who can blame them? I’ve lived my entire life in this country, but I have never before witnessed the shocking...
Standing in front of a massive pipe organ at Winnipeg’s Knox United Church on Thursday evening, NDP scion Avi Lewis was preaching to the converted. It was the eve of the party’s leadership convention, one that party members believe could seal the NDP’s fate. Will the next leader revive a nearly moribund federal party by inspiring new and past voters...
There is nothing really new about the New Democratic Party, founded as it was in 1961. Nor with six seats, is it an official party, according to the status rules of the House of Commons. It is however, still democratic and the leadership vote culminating this weekend will point the way to where the NDP — and the progressive left...
No one knows where Donald Trump got the notion of annexing Canada. It hasn’t been seriously suggested by any significant figure in American politics for at least a century. There has been next to no take-up of the proposal, even among his MAGA followers. But the underlying premises – the idea that America must have complete dominion over the Western...
Here is an evergreen news story if there ever was one: the Prime Minister’s official residence has problems. Yes, we are talking about that again – the PM’s digs. Except this time we aren’t talking about 24 Sussex. We’re talking about the cottage that the Prime Minister of Canada had to move into on the grounds of the Governor-General’s residence...
Sunday's coronation won't revive a dead federal party, but his extremist agenda will absolutely tank their provincial success stories. Pundits love to overcomplicate politics, but the math for this Sunday’s NDP leadership vote is painfully simple. For Avi Lewis to be denied a first-ballot victory, the other four candidates on the ballot need to somehow scrape together 50% plus one...
Impressive ambition. A needed boost for Canadian sovereignty. Some hope for industrial transition. But when you get down to the math, there is only half the equation. The figures are big. After touring a Royal Canadian Navy ship on Thursday, and boasting that Canada has finally met the NATO target for defence spending, Prime Minister Mark Carney made a point...
In a way, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer came full circle this week. In February 2013, as the term of the first parliamentary budget officer neared an end, the Official Opposition put a motion before the House of Commons calling for the independence of the office to be reinforced and for the term of Kevin Page to be...
The Supreme Court spent most of this week hearing oral arguments in what is widely known as the Bill 21 case, after the infamous Quebec law banning the wearing of religious symbols in much of the public sector – effectively a hiring bar on observant members of certain religious minorities. Only it isn’t really Bill 21 that is at issue...
I once predicted semi-seriously in a long-ago column that climate change and calm — or a combination of temperature and temperament — would make Canada a 21st-century superpower. Donald Trump may have achieved it in half the time. The term “New World Order” went viral not long after the dawn of 2026, when Prime Minister Mark Carney used it to...
MY EXCELLENT FRIEND and former colleague Steve Walt of the Harvard Kennedy School calls them the predatory hegemons. America, China, and Russia are prowling the world, turning a rule-ordered playing field into a jungle in which the rule of the strongest prevails. The middling powers Prime Minister Mark Carney talked about at Davos are scrambling to escape the jungle. Carney’s...
For years, the dismal state of 24 Sussex Drive has been a recurring punchline, a symbol of political paralysis, and a quiet national embarrassment. I spent years inside the machinery of government, close enough to watch good policy die, not from bad ideas, but from political timidness. The file on 24 Sussex is one I know well. It remains, after...
Those who aspire to lead democratic nations are tested from the moment they declare their candidacy. Does he speak well? Is she good on her feet? How will he handle the economy? Will she be trusted in a crisis? Each candidate is sliced and smeared and pressed onto a slide, so that the electorate can inspect every personal and professional...
The Carney government needs to get its story straight on foreign interference and transnational repression — especially as it relates to India. After this government insisted that the Indian government was cooperating with the Canadian investigation into the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar and other crimes like extortion and arson, the Indian government said there was never anything to investigate...
You’d never know it, given the scarcity of attention accorded the NDP leadership race, but there is so much riding on it. There’s the question of whether the party can survive, whether the sagging left in Canada can keep it alive. There is, ipso facto, the question of whether Canada is reduced to an American-styled two-party system, with less choice...
Just as turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, it would be unreasonable to expect Canada’s chicken farmers to elect for more open trade with the world’s major poultry exporter. The chicken sector is, after all, one of this country’s supply-managed industries. It’s protected from most foreign competition, ostensibly in the name of domestic food security but also, whisper it, to ensure...
There are days when Canada just makes me want to crawl under the bed and hide. Days when I wonder if this country really is redeemable, despite its endless natural resources, generally level-headed and tolerant population, geographic insulation from global strife and hundreds of years of good luck. Tuesday was one of those days. Wednesday was another. I’m not expecting...
Several years ago, a cabinet minister seated next to me at an Ottawa dinner, leaned in. The chatter around the table was the NDP’s particularly biting criticism of the Trudeau government that day. “I don’t mind,” the minister whispered in my ear. “They keep us honest.” This minister believed pressure from the NDP kept the Grits true to their values...
Except for the ill-conceived public campaign to get well-known commentator Don Cherry installed as a member of the Order of Canada, the Conservatives look like they have carved out a few positive weeks for themselves. It’s better than the abysmal fall and early winter that left many Conservative supporters in a foul mood, and Leader Pierre Poilievre constantly having to...
Avi Lewis likes neon-sign politics. That was the point of the Leap Manifesto he co-authored more than a decade ago in a bid to prod the NDP to the left. He didn’t propose steps. He wanted a leap. “We’re challenging decades of political clichés. So we want to spend like drunken sailors,” he said then, in an interview at the...
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith faces heat Tuesday from some folks who likely voted for her and the UCP in the last provincial election. Heat from those who may support Smith and like a lot of what she’s doing but think the deal she inked with Prime Minister Mark Carney to get a pipeline to the west coast is not worth...
Every March, millions of fans set aside their better judgment and give themselves over to the chaos of a basketball tournament aptly called March Madness. Its charm is simple. Anything can happen. Underdogs from small colleges sometimes topple the giants. We watch, we wince, we marvel. This year, the madness has spilled beyond the court into far more dangerous territory...
The scale of growth of Canada’s assisted-dying industry has become an easy talking point for skeptics both in Canada and abroad. The New York Post, in typical tabloid fashion, announced that Canada will “soon cross the sickly six-figure threshold” of 100,000 deaths by medical assistance in dying (MAID), noting the figure will surpass the number of Canadian deaths during the...
Start with the crisis everyone agrees on. A generation of young Canadians has been priced out of home ownership. Rents are consuming incomes. The dream of a mortgage, a backyard, a place to call one’s own has become, for millions, exactly that — a dream. Any serious federal leader must make housing affordability a defining mission. Which makes what I’m...
If you lay on the beach on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, warming your northern skin and admiring the play of the sun on the waves, you can sip pina coladas made from beautiful local pineapple juice, and when you want a snack, you can pay a few pesos for a little bag of brown Spanish peanuts from...
Energy Minister Tim Hodgson said today the federal government is opposed to forced labour, a day after another Liberal MP cast doubt on China's labour practices. On Thursday, Michael Ma apologized after appearing to question reports of human rights abuses in China while engaging with a witness at a parliamentary committee hearing earlier in the evening.
Economists are boosting their forecasts for Canadian inflation and unemployment as the war in Iran drives up oil prices and heightens global instability. Article content Analysts in a Bloomberg survey see the consumer price index rising at a 2.4 per cent annual pace this year, up from 2.2 per cent in last month’s survey. Unemployment is expected to average 6....
Prime Minister Mark Carney's first budget bill is now law, marking a milestone for the minority Liberal government. The budget implementation act, Bill C-15, received royal assent Thursday evening after the Senate gave its final sign-off on the legislation. The bill passed the House of Commons on recorded division in February, which means members of Parliament gave it the green-light...
Contrary to popular belief, the choice made by voters in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne in the April 13 byelection will have major implications on moving bills forward in the House of Commons. The rules of procedure in the Commons mean that, in this current Parliament, the magic number allowing a government to have a free hand is not 17...
Group of Seven foreign ministers met on Friday in France to discuss the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with deep divisions apparent over the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated complaints that America’s allies have ignored or rejected requests for help in the military operation and in confronting Iran’s retaliatory attacks, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz...
Winner will take over a party that only elected 7 MPs — then lost 1 to Liberals. The NDP will have a new leader by Sunday afternoon — and whoever comes out of the party's convention in Winnipeg with the top job will be tasked with bringing the party back from a historic low. Five candidates — MP Heather McPherson...
New Democrats from across the country are gathering in Winnipeg for the party's convention, where a new federal party leader will be chosen by the end of the weekend. After a six-month leadership race, voting closes on Saturday and the new leader will be announced Sunday morning. The candidates are union leader Rob Ashton, social worker Tanille Johnston, filmmaker Avi...
MP Michael Ma, who left the Conservatives to join the Liberals, has apologized after appearing to cast doubt on reports of human rights abuses in China. Ma said he regretted making a mistake with his remarks, while pointing out that he had referred to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, and not Xinjiang, where the Communist government has been accused...
An MP who left the Conservatives to join the Liberals is casting doubt on reports of human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region. MP Michael Ma asked an expert during a parliamentary committee hearing Thursday whether she'd seen forced labour with her own eyes. "Have you witnessed forced labour in Xinjiang? Have you witnessed forced labour? Just a short answer...
Ontario is delaying a path to balance once more, as one of several shock absorbers meant to ease the province down a potentially bumpy economic road ahead, though it is currently faring better than previously feared in the face of U.S. tariffs. Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is for the third year in a row delaying a surplus, now projecting black...
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, Canada is spending roughly two per cent of its GDP on national defence — a key NATO alliance benchmark Ottawa previously failed to meet. NATO's annual report, released Thursday, contains estimates stating Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government met the key spending benchmark for 2025 by shelling out just over...
British Columbia Conservative MLA Hon Chan has been charged with assault, assault by choking and uttering threats, prompting his removal from the party caucus. The BC Prosecution Service says the Richmond Centre legislator was charged under the name Hon-Sang Chan after a special prosecutor was appointed to look into the case last June.
Canada might join efforts to ensure ships can move freely through the Strait of Hormuz if there is a ceasefire in the Persian Gulf, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday. "There are conversations with our NATO partners — some NATO partners — concerning what we can do with a ceasefire, at the moment there is a ceasefire, in order...
The prime minister said there should be a public apology for a spying operation targeting hundreds of Indigenous people that had the support of the federal government. "Yes, there should be an apology," Mark Carney said during a press conference in Halifax on Thursday. "It’s a reprehensible practice. Never should’ve happened." Carney was responding to reporting from CBC Indigenous, which...
The Liberal government is proposing new legislation to strengthen electoral integrity by banning digital deepfakes of candidates, cracking down on unduly long ballots and protecting nomination and leadership contests. The government says the Strong and Free Elections Act responds to recommendations from an inquiry into foreign interference and from others, including the chief electoral officer. The new bill would also...
The public servant leading the transition away from the federal government's error-prone Phoenix pay system says he's stepping down because the team no longer needs him. Alex Benay, associate deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, says in a LinkedIn post the backlog of Phoenix cases older than a year and the overall queue of complaints are at their...
Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty announced on Thursday a $738.9-million funding package for First Nations health care, governance and emergency management. She is earmarking $55.6 million to build up community preparedness and emergency management co-ordination. The funds are not directly related to fire management but could help with operations such as wildfire support. Gull-Masty's department is under heavy pressure from...
Indigenous Services Canada and other departments are failing to uphold their own Indigenous procurement strategy and may be allowing contractors to use shell companies to access contracts reserved for Indigenous businesses, says the federal procurement ombudsman. In a scathing new report released Thursday, Alexander Jeglic says Indigenous Services Canada failed to provide timely answers to procurement officers' questions in some...
The head of Air Canada apologized on Thursday for delivering an English-only video response to Sunday’s collision between one of the airline’s planes and a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York City that left two pilots dead. “Despite many lessons over several years, unfortunately, I am still unable to express myself adequately in French,” Michael Rousseau said in...
After more than a decade of plodding progress, Canada has officially hit the NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP set during the Wales Summit of 2014. According to data in the NATO Secretary-General’s annual report released this morning, Canada spent more than $60 billion on defence in 2025 – an amount that adds up to two per...
An air bubble of about half a billion barrels of oil is set to wreak havoc on global economies. For every day the war in the Middle East drags on, the crisis in energy markets deepens. The price of everything from gas and oil to jet fuel and plastics is rising sharply. That crisis is set to get dramatically worse...
Ontario's finance minister will unveil the province's budget today, which is not expected to have any tax increases. Peter Bethlenfalvy has signalled Ontarians must plan for tougher times ahead as U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war continues and global conflicts push strong headwinds against Ontario's economy. Ontario's deficit earlier this year stood at $13.4 billion and its overall debt as...
Oil pipeline system connecting Alberta to West Coast was previously expected to fill up by 2027 or 2028 The Trans Mountain oil pipeline system is expected to operate at full capacity in April and into May as a result of energy disruptions caused by the war in the Middle East. The pair of pipelines transport oil from Edmonton to a...
Conservatives are calling for resignation of current minister and 2 predecessors. Justice Minister Sean Fraser, who was in charge of immigration during some of the years Auditor General Karen Hogan found instances of fraud in Canada's international student program, said with hindsight, he would have acted sooner to fundamentally change it. The Opposition Conservatives have been calling for his resignation...
Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney is taking up the Canadian cause as he's set to participate in two debates about separatism against a lawyer pushing for the province to go its own way. The first debate will take place in Edmonton in May at a member's only conference put on by Civitas Canada, a conservative non-profit organization.
The MP representing Tumbler Ridge, B.C., has described how a 12-year-old girl heroically tried to save two classmates shot in the mass killing in the community last month. Bob Zimmer told Tuesday's National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa that the girl, named Christina, had dragged both Abel Mwansa Jr. and Maya Gebala under a table after both of the 12-year-olds were...
A House of Commons committee is calling on the government to make it harder for protest groups to sign up dozens of candidates in a single riding, after Elections Canada announced Wednesday that voters in an upcoming byelection in Quebec will use a write-in ballot because of the high number of candidates.
Ahead of the Liberal Party’s national convention next month, members of its youth wing are urging candidates for national chair of their body to remain independent from government, warning against treating the role as a stepping stone to high-profile Hill jobs. Speaking with The Hill Times on a not-for-attribution basis, supporters of the third-party “Young Liberals for Change” pledge say...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is criticizing Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau for his English-only message of condolences to the families of the pilots who died in a plane crash on Sunday at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. “We live in a bilingual country, and companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages regardless of...
Alberta Liberal MP Corey Hogan says the Keystone XL pipeline is being used as leverage in the federal government’s ongoing trade talks with the U.S. “I can tell you that Keystone XL and the energy security it would provide the United States has always been one of the cards that Canada has in our deck as we start thinking about...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A pro-Iranian hacking group claimed Friday to have hacked an account of FBI Director Kash Patel and posted online what appear to be years-old photographs of him, along with a work resume and other personal documents dating back more than a decade.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday afternoon that should pay TSA employees next week. Trump's action came after a Homeland Security funding measure collapsed in congress. The measure passed the Senate early Friday morning but was swiftly rejected by House Republicans. TSA workers were set to miss a second consecutive paycheck Friday.
STOWE, Vt. (AP) -- Looking back, gubernatorial candidate Dean Roy says his political ambitions started in the eighth grade. And by that he means, last year.
It has a catchy name -- Build America, Buy America -- and the lauded goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
Group of Seven foreign ministers met on Friday in France to discuss the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with deep divisions apparent over the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated complaints that America’s allies have ignored or rejected requests for help in the military operation and in confronting Iran’s retaliatory attacks, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz...
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of fuelling the war in Iran to distract from the millions of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, also referred to as the “Epstein files,” saying the conflict is driving up gas prices for Canadians. In an interview with CTV’s Power Play with Vassy Kapelos on Tuesday, Kinew...
Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election for a Florida state House seat on Tuesday, flipping a district that is home to President Donald Trump's estate, Mar-a-Lago. The Republican president endorsed Gregory's rival, Jon Maples. In a social media post Monday, he urged voters to turn out, saying Maples was endorsed "by so many of my Palm Beach County friends."...
India would like to create a trusted traveller program with Ottawa that could ease access to Canada for Indian businesspeople similar to the NEXUS program for Canadians and Americans, New Delhi’s top envoy says. Dinesh Patnaik, India’s high commissioner to Canada, said such an arrangement could be part of the deepening ties between the two countries that follow from Prime...
President Donald Trump took to social media Saturday to celebrate the death of Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who famously led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Canada’s renewed embrace of industrial policy and megaprojects signals a decisive shift toward an activist ‘nation-of‑builders’ strategy. However, a real test of its success is whether it can support lasting, community‑led prosperity in regions that depend on natural resource extraction or energy generation.
Canada’s housing shortage is no longer just an affordability problem. It is increasingly a constraint on economic growth, labour mobility, and the ability of cities to function effectively. Despite record levels of construction employment and investment, housing supply continues to fall far short of what Canadians need. The core problem lies in a sustained decline in residential construction productivity. Employment...
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
Canadian troops may be only days away from deploying to the Middle East to aid the U.S.’s and Israel’s war on Iran. The latest indication is a joint statement expressing concern about Iran’s restriction of oil tankers through the narrow Strait of Hormuz signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO allies late in the week.
Canadians who have neglected to pay their taxes to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) have been coming forward in droves to take advantage of new amnesty rules.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s spurious excuses for gutting the province’s freedom-of-information (FOI) law are exactly why we need transparency legislation in the first place: governments are habitual liars. Last week, the Ford government said it plans to weaken its sunshine law by erecting brick walls around every minister’s office, including the premier’s. Freedom-of-information requests will no longer be accepted. The...
Peter Mazereeuw speaks with David Fraser, a technology and privacy lawyer with McInnes Cooper, about government bill C-22, which proposes new powers for police and intelligence officers to access Canadians' electronic data and tap into their devices.
At Issue this week: The benefits, and challenges, of Canada finally meeting its two per cent NATO spending target. The uphill political battle facing the next NDP Leader. And, the growing provincial divide over how judges are appointed in Canada.
Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites, we’re sinking deep into the Washington swamp today. Our guest is Brody Mullins, co-author of: “The Wolves of K Street”. If you’ve ever wondered about the cigar chomping, big-time lobbying industry in Washington, located on K street just a few blocks from the White House, its rise, its non-existent moral code, its supplanting...
The most predictive indicator of most leadership races is money. And in the NDP leadership race, Avi Lewis has raised the most of it — by far. Does that make him the favourite to win the NDP crown on Sunday? This week on The Numbers, before we both jet off to Winnipeg, we set our expectations for how the vote...
